Endosymbiosis

36. Foreboding

Second circle of the Empire
Poison District

My mind was cloudier than usual during those last noxdiems... As if the universe was trying to reveal something to me that I couldn't translate, yet my thoughts tuned in to its voice the further I slipped into the dark .

So when one of the soldiers from my personal guard burst into the hall, it took me longer than it should for me to noticed his arrival.

"Sir, we have collected the bodies of the downed rebel ship." He said, pulling me out of the universe in my mind.

"AND?"

"One of the leaders of the rebellion is among them..."

That piqued my interest.

I dismissed the soldier with one movement and heard him close the door behind me, leaving me alone in the vastness of the hall. I walked to the porch and surveyed the landscape below, where the central city of my Poison District stretched out to meet the sky, glorious in its onyx buildings threatening to tear the stars apart. My Empire disguised as a District, just waiting for the right moment to grow... A moment that could have arrived, in the form of a downed rebel ship.

I descended the stairs to the courtyard at the front of the palace, where soldiers lined up the bodies of rebels on the floor. It was more than I had imagined... Maybe we had managed to interrupt something really important.

I walked down the line until the glow of a uniform brooch reached my eyes, the fabric dyed red in a pathetic attempt to reframe the Blood District army's clothes, just as that entire world had been. Or maybe all that red was theirs, because of their own defeat.

I watched that vorrampe for a moment, full of brooches decorating his clothes to simulate some power the Empire would never have given him... Korrok, leader of the rebels. And if he was already dead, I doubted that that pathetic rebelion would last much longer.

"Save this one's brain." I pointed at him with the tip of my stinger. "I want to read his memoirs."

My soldiers quickly were ready to isolate the head of that creature and give me access to the ruins of his mind, where I found meaning for the thoughts I started to have in the last noxdiems. Nothing could be more right. That was the truth the universe had been trying to reveal to me all this time, after I had been chosen to receive its glory and spread it all over Itopis. Who else would the universe choose?

On the same noxdiem I flew to the Protection District to reveal my discovery.

"How do you know that body was really Korrok's, Telson?" Bleine asked me, deeply intrigued. "All vorrampes look alike."

"He had the insignia of the commander of the revolution." She craned her neck, unconvinced. All of this could have been fabricated to deceive us, but I was certain that what I had seen was confirmation of what the universe had wanted to say to me. Still, I couldn't tell Bleine about my beliefs after the Empire's ban on religions. "And I saw his memories."

Bleine floated towards me.

Having the Protection District as an ally was exactly what mine needed for its expansion, just as it had long been desired by me. The universe had been slow in delivering its blessings to me, but it finally made up for its delay.

"War plans?" She asked, which I slowly confirmed.

"They will attack your District."